Columnist dissects 2006-07 schedule

By Adam Bagni
Collegian Staff
November 15, 2006

Last year, some idiot said that he would “absolutely not” be surprised if the La Salle men’s basketball team went 7-0, despite the fact that they hadn’t had a winning season in 12 years.

In all seriousness though, this year’s schedule is even more intriguing than last year’s, so let’s try to take a hard look at it.

Head Coach John Giannini has again scheduled an extremely soft non-conference schedule, with eight teams outside last year’s RPI Top 200. The soft schedule is always a gamble.

On one hand, it can give your players confidence, add numbers to the win column, assist young players in transition and help lift a struggling program.

On the other hand, it can ill prepare the team for tougher competition, hurt the squad in the polls, alienate fans and set up a potential disastrous loss.

With all that being said, I can’t fault Giannini for this year’s non-conference schedule. He has a very young team, which is also searching for an identity after losing Steven Smith.

La Salle missed the NIT last year specifically because of that soft schedule, so I would have liked to see a few tougher non-conference opponents this go-round. But outright, I won’t criticize Giannini for trying to guarantee Ws.

La Salle opens the season Saturday against Mount St. Mary’s, a team the Explorers handily beat by 22 points last year. It should be the first win in a 4-0 start, with only one of those games even being close when the final buzzer sounds (Coppin State).

Game five, however, should be interesting.

As long as the Explorers beat the lowly Eagles, they will have a date with Iowa Dec. 2. Now the Hawkeyes are in the Big Ten, which already houses three teams in the top 16. The game is also in Iowa City.

However, it will be early in the season, and there’s no doubt in my mind that Iowa is not going to take La Salle very seriously. Add to that the fact that it will be Iowa’s third game in four days, and I think there’s a recipe cooking here for an upset.

If La Salle does manage to beat Iowa, it should be a second consecutive 7-0 start for La Salle. Then again, watch out for an upset by Central Connecticut State. It took the Explorers four overtimes to finish off the Blue Devils last year.

La Salle could potentially put their undefeated record on the line against a possibly-ranked Villanova team Dec. 23. In a smart move by the Athletic Department, the Explorers will not play this game at the Palestra, forgoing the financial benefits, and instead try to benefit from the home court advantage of our very own Tom Gola Arena.

Unfortunately, the Athletic Department dropped the ball and scheduled this one over Christmas break, so don’t expect to see many student fans in attendance.

The reactions of Explorer fans should also be interesting, to say the least, in a few games this year. The most obvious of these will be La Salle’s two games against Temple.

The showdowns will mark the first time Fran Dunphy has coached against La Salle after taking over John Chaney’s former squad. Dunphy, a La Salle alum who led the Explorers to a 23-1 season in 1970 while averaging 19 points per game, was the lead candidate to replace Billy Hahn after La Salle’s rape allegation scandal in 2003.

However, Dunphy chose to return to his coaching job at Penn saying, “No way I could leave the program. [Penn] was where I belonged.”

Two years later, he jumped ship and went to Temple. On Feb. 14 expect Explorer fans at the Tom Gola Arena to give Dunphy an unfriendly welcome home—to say the least.

Explorer fans may also be directing some serious heckling in a surprising direction – at the head coach of Morgan State. Todd Bozeman, whose Bears visit the Gola Dec. 20, is returning to coaching this year after an eight-year ban by the NCAA. At 29, he was the youngest coach ever to lead a team to the Sweet 16 (California). But it all came crashing down for Bozeman in 1992, when he admitted to violating policy by giving $30,000 to a recruit’s family.

Bozeman hasn’t technically been suspended, but has rather been exiled under the NCAA’s “show-cause” penalty. The show-cause requires a school to go before the NCAA’s infractions committee to explain why they should allow that individual to coach again.

Despite the interest that surrounds some of the non-conference opponents, it still all comes down to the Atlantic 10 games, most of which are very unpredictable. Charlotte looks to be the sleeper in the conference this year. Although Xavier is the favorite in 2006-07, I’m looking at Massachusetts to surprise a lot of people as the year progresses. As for La Salle, with their lack of experience, I wouldn’t expect much more than a .500 record in the A-10.

bagnia1@lasalle.edu